Bill Orcutt — Jump On It (Palilalia)
Photo by Steve Goodwin
Jump On It by Bill Orcutt
Jump On It comes freighted with curiosity and expectation. It is Bill Orcutt’s first solo acoustic recording since Solo Acoustic Volume 10, which he recorded for VDSQ on Christmas day, 2013. It’s worth noting that eleven years elapsed between Harry Pussy’s expiration in 1997 and Orcutt’s return came apart in 1997. Might it be that a decade and change is some sort of Orcuttian gestational period?
To be sure, there are differences between the two gaps. Orcutt pretty much hung up his guitar after the 1998 release, Let’s Build A Pussy, a death rattle of a double LP created from one time-stretched utterance by HP’s singer-drummer, Adris Hoyos. He moved across the country to San Francisco, got a job and a family, and didn’t really think about playing music again until the act of compiling Harry Pussy’s scattered vinyl onto the CD You’ll Never Play This Town Again recharged him with the joy of his own sound. After that, he picked up an acoustic guitar and began developing the material that became A New Way To Pay Old Debts, a frantic dive into punk blues encrusted with enough oxidized crud to justify drydocking a supertanker. By contrast, Orcutt’s remained steadily in the public eye since 2013. He’s played electric guitar in solo, improvised duo, and quartet settings, and also pursued a less visible but highly relevant sideline in electronic, systems-oriented experimentation that elaborates upon ideas proposed by Let’s Build A Pussy.
Thematically, the first electric solo LP, Bill Orcutt, continued the thread of interrogating the American songbook pursued on its acoustic predecessors. But beginning with that record, Orcutt has shown an increased concern with making records whose sonic qualities won’t lacerate your ears. Additionally, the original material on his most recent collaboration with Chris Corsano, Made Out Of Sound, and solo LP, Odds Against Tomorrow, give voice to a newfound lyricism. These developments all relate to the music on Jump On It, which, like its immediate predecessor, Music For Four Guitars, is a brief and unfailingly on point. Orcutt used a Harmony Sovereign guitar instead of the old Kay, and while he recorded it at home, he retained Chuck Johnson to mix and master the album’s ten tracks. The resulting sound is clear and resonant, which does justice to the music Orcutt’s composed. And instead of feral yelps, ringing phones, and passing traffic, the guitarist accompanies himself with subliminally registered breaths.
“What Do You Do With Memory” opens the album with a pensive melody. While the tune leads to some clusters and crabbed runs, its symmetrical resolution is as reflective as its beginning. “The Life Of Jesus” and “A Natural Death” likewise uses elegant themes to frame their flurries of trademarked dissonance. And the spacious arrangement and patient development of “An Ocean Will Find Its Shore” wouldn’t be out of place on a Ralph Towner record. There, I said it. While there’s not enough added reverb to earn Orcutt a ticket to a photo op in the fjords, Jump On It projects enough conventional beauty to lure in some ECM fans. The jaggedness and urgency is still there, but it’s contained within a broader emotional and sonic spectrum.
Bill Meyer
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🙃 Regular reminder that while Hozier has amazing love songs, he is ALSO very outspoken about his leftist politics, specifically anti-fascism, anti-racism, reproductive rights, Palestinian rights and more.
Take Me To Church and Foreigner’s God are scathing critiques of organized religion, specifically the Catholic Church and the colonization of Ireland.
Moment’s Silence is about oral sex but it’s ALSO about how that specific sexual act is often distorted to a show of power rather than that of love.
Nina Cried Power is an homage to various (mostly Black) civil rights activists from the US and Ireland and a call to follow their path.
Be criticizes anti-migrant policies and Trump and his ilk.
Jackboot Jump is about the global wave of fascism and about protest and resistance.
Swan Upon Leda is about reproductive rights and the violent colonial oppression of Ireland and Palestine.
Eat Your Young is about the ruinous way the 1%/capitalism and arms dealers prioritize short-term profit over everything else to the detriment of the youth/99%
Butchered Tongue is about Irish and other indigenous languages being suppressed and erased by imperial powers.
If any of the above surprised you, please, please delve deeper into Hozier’s music, you’re missing such an important part of his work.
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if there's one thing this last episode has affirmed for me about Alastor it's that he FUCKING HATES being reminded that he's not the most powerful creature in hell.
Like, he hates being ignored by Carmilla when she says she doesn't care why he was gone
He hates Lucifer ON SIGHT
He threatens to KILL Husk when he dares to mention that Alastor is working for someone more powerful than him
and now this.
Alastor freaking out because he almost died. Something almost killed him. He can fucking die. There is something more powerful than him out there. And it's not something he can ignore or brush off because it almost killed him.
Alastor hates the reminder that he's not as powerful as he tells people he is. He isn't indestructible, he isn't invincible. And he fucking hates that.
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crowley must have known that aziraphale was also in love with him, he tidied the bookshop, he was planning on taking him to the Ritz after his confession, he had their song queued in the car these are not acts of someone who wasn't sure what the outcome will be.
which makes it so much more painful that he still confessed his love for aziraphale with tears in his eyes and on the verge of a full blown panic attack, he left saying "don't bother" but he still waited by his car til the elevator doors closed. all because
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